Now in our 14th year as an independent technology publication, KitGuru has never been more shocked than when the person responsible for PR samples and budget for the UK posted publicly on one of our channels that they believed it was legal to buy positive reviews. The same sentiment has been expressed in a previous call with several ASUS personnel – followed by confusion on their part as we tried to explain that positive messaging was something that they would do with their advertising and promotions, but that we valued editorial integrity above everything else. This was not the behaviour and mentality that we had come to believe existed in ASUS, since it started to make big waves in the motherboard sector back in the mid-1990s, so we filed it away.
We could not go along with that way of thinking and no amount of persuasion from us that it was a ‘bad way forward’ made any difference. In light of the recent stories from Gamers Nexus, Jayz Two Cents and now Linus, we feel honour bound to share our experience and to say that we fear that significant parts of the company are no longer running on the kind of principals that Jonney Shih and Jonathan Tsang would expect to find in their organisation.
Above: One of over 30 public comments by ASUS UK PR representative reads “I believe buying positive reviews are legal”. Comments may get deleted by ASUS, but we have recorded all of them. Directors from ASUS UK asked us to send over the evidence and we did. Now, around 4 months later, we have yet to hear anything back.
We have not been working with ASUS directly in 2023.
We feel readers must be able to trust the information presented to them. Without that level of trust, how can anyone make an informed purchasing decision? KitGuru has built a monthly audience of millions and a combined social media following of more than half a million enthusiasts – because our testing methodologies, resulting numbers and conclusions can be trusted.
Posting publicly that you think it’s ‘legal to buy positive reviews’ runs against everything we believe in. Sure, run adverts, create showcase videos that focus on specific aspects of a product’s features that may not get a lot of attention in general, but they are not reviews – they carry the label ‘Promotional feature
